Freebie board test service underscores efficacy of boundary-scan system

IEEE-1149.1 JTAG (Joint Test Action Group) support company XJTAG Ltd. (Cambridge, England) is now offering a free board test service to prospective users. The company's goal in doing so is to demonstrate the claimed speed, efficiency, and ease-of-use of its Windows-hosted XJTAG boundary scan development system. This offer comes on the heels of XJTAG's recently released XJRunnerWindows graphical add-on.

The service, launched at the Automotive Electronics Autosport International exhibition, is available to any company that has a board that contains at least one JTAG device on it, although the service is limited to one board per company.

A Competitive Demo

"This offer will enable us to demonstrate, on a bona fide development board, how, by using the JTAG chain and writing and then re-using test scripts, printed circuits can be tested and debugged in hours or days, as opposed to weeks with competitive systems," avows Simon Payne, XJTAG's chief executive officer.

In use, Payne notes that XJTAG can test a high proportion of a printed circuit, including JTAG and non-JTAG devices such as BGAs (ball grid arrays), and CSPs (chip scale packaged) devices. It can also test SDRAMs, Ethernet controllers, video interfaces, flash, FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays), and microprocessors, to name a few.

"Many board designers and developers are still unaware of the capability of boundary-scan systems," adds Payne. "They don't realize the fact that JTAG testing can be cost-effective, particularly for smaller, more tightly packed circuit boards with fewer test points and an increasing proportion of JTAG-compliant chips."

From Design To Field Support, Repair

XJTAG's XJTAG Development System provides an integrated environment that can migrate seamlessly through a product's life cycle, from early design to field support and repair. XJTAG lets you shorten the development cycle and prototyping process by facilitating early test development, and early design validation of CAD (computer assisted design) netlists. It also shortens the process by providing fast generation of highly functional tests, and test re-use across circuits that utilize the same devices.

Note, too, that XJTAG's test scripts are re-usable and portable across different boards, thanks to a novel device-centric approach. Re-usable device tests and the abstraction of device tests from both circuit detail and complexity of JTAG, means that you can quickly develop systems to debug elements of your designs, and to functionally test early prototypes.